The 7 Best Moments From The Frantic United States Grand Prix

It was a pretty lively first lap of the race, with a few separate incidents. While Lewis Hamilton, Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Rosberg led the field away, there was contact between Valtteri Bottas, Nico Hulkenberg and Sebastian Vettel at Turn 1. Daniil Kvyat then tagged Sergio Perez into a spin at Turn 11, in an open lobby-esque move.

2. SURPRISE MOTHERFU...

Max Verstappen said over team radio he wasn’t there to fight for fourth place, but he didn’t help himself by turning up at his pit box unannounced. He thought the team had boxed him, but no. They hadn’t. He almost ran over a wheel gun from impatience, too.

Verstappen’s race went from bad to worse when a gearbox issue caused him to pull off track on lap 30. But he took his sweet time trying to find a parking spot and where he did stop caused a Virtual Safety Car, which mucked up his team-mate Ricciardo’s strategy…

Kimi Raikkonen had been having a pretty decent race but naturally Ferrari messed that up for him at his second pit stop. He was forced to park his car just after the pit exit, because the team was worried there had been a problem with a wheel gun and one of his tyres wasn’t on properly.

Bringing out the yellow flags, the Iceman didn’t know what to do and decided to roll his car back down the hill and into the pit lane (we’re not sure that’s allowed!). What do we think his response was? This:

A feisty Fernando Alonso caused a stir in the final laps. First, he put in an opportunistic move on Felipe Massa at Turn 16. They tagged wheels and Massa eventually picked up a puncture, but Alonso soldiered on and then passed Carlos Sainz Jr. on the penultimate lap for fifth.

It seemed to be the race of tetchy team radio in Texas. We had Alonso saying “behind the Renaults, what a disaster,” and Verstappen’s now infamous “I’m not here to finish fourth”, before his dejected “I thought you boxed me, sorry”.

We also had to put up with Jolyon Palmer moaning about being stuck behind his team-mate. But on a lighter note, Alonso’s “yeeeehaaaa” after passing Sainz and Vettel’s “Some? Good joke” about rear wing drop-outs made up for it.

7. Different kind of shoey

Actor Gerard Butler took to the podium afterwards to do the post-race interviews and - of course - it was painfully awkward. It was livened up though by Ricciardo making him do a shoey, but replacing the podium bubbly with Red Bull. Butler was a good sport and drank from Ricciardo’s sweaty shoe, livening up a bit of a weird podium.

What was your favourite bit of the race?